Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Twenty-third hour of the day of the dead under palm trees scissoring dryly in the breeze off of Subic Bay the deaf-&-dumb girl we picked up at the Dogpatch Hotel strumming an old out-of-tune guitar while we sit on the bamboo porch of the ex-helicopter pilot’s bungalow drinking ice-cold San Miguels Jack Daniels on the rocks smoking Filipino Red watching a big green lizard perched next to the single light bulb under the thatched roof where it waits totally motionless until a moth is momentarily stunned after brief contact with the light bulb & a long pink tongue suddenly snaps out & the lizard swallows the witless moth whole while the ex-pilot is telling us of his stint working on the set of Apocalypse Now & how they taped charges to the legs of a water buffalo & blew him to pieces in front of the cameras & Marlon Brando in one of his countless improvisations started rubbing himself with the bloody remains of the water buffalo while going into a long intense monologue about his mother until he was totally soaked & glistening red with the blood & the tears were streaming down his face & how the scene was never used & god what a waste & then the party is finally over & we’re out on the street looking for a taxi to get us to a hotel somewhere before the curfew comes down & there across the way is a huge cemetery sprawling down the hillside with thousands of candles flickering on each & every grave & tombstone like a cascading waterfall of tiny points of glimmering light & people are walking by with chickens under their arms & mongrel dogs are scurrying silently from one shadow to the next & the warm night air is thick with the smell of pansit & lumpia & those skewers of bright red meat you see them grilling on every corner & I can feel the booze in my legs & the dope in my head & I’m starting to feel diminished by everything around me & overwhelmed by the entire scenario when suddenly the deaf-&-dumb girl sticks her tongue in my ear & for a second I’m thinking about that big green lizard again & then I’m looking into her face glowing warm brown friendly smiling in the light of the thousands of candles & I realize that despite the onslaught of phenomena & my inability to articulate communication is going to be the least of my problems tonight.